Ted Lamont’s campaign just forwarded to its supporters a link to a GQ article on the leadup to the Lamont/Liebermann primary. It’s an illuminating read, and one passage in particular I have to totally agree with:
After a month of interviews, I’m convinced many voters generally like Joe and that he could have taken the wind out of Ned’s sails by simply saying he miscalculated in his optimism on the outcome of the war and asked for voters’ forbearance. That he refuses to pay them that respect infuriates people. He may just lose his career over the simple human inability to concede a possible mistake. Interesting.
I think that pretty much sums it up in a nutshell. That right there is the single most important reason that Joe lost the Connecticut Democratic Primary. I believe most Democrats would be willing to overlook his attempts to force some kind of moral regulation on Hollywood or the music industry and could respectfully agree to disagree over some of his votes in the Senate. But it is this stubborn refusal to budge an inch on the notion that red-blooded, patriotic Americans could have a point when they protest the war in Iraq that ultimately gave rise to a Democratic challenger. That’s really all it was. One rather large sentence pushed most Democrats over the line: “It’s time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge that he will be the commander in chief for three more critical years and that in matters of war we undermine presidential credibility at our nation’s peril.” These words are now part of American history, and may be the direct words that led to the very rare circumstance where an incumbent is defeated in his party’s primary by an inexperienced challenger.